1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing control method and system and, more particularly, to a printing control method and system for printing a document of a plurality of pages by a plurality of printers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Normally in printing a document on a host computer, one printer is selected from printers usable for the host computer to perform printing. When a document is to be divided and printed by a plurality of printers, the document is divided at specific pages, and the respective divided portions are printed by all printers used for printing in the order of pages.
When, however, printing is to be performed by one printer though other printers are usable, printing processing cannot be performed at a speed higher than the speed of the printer used for printing. Also, when printing is to be performed by a plurality of printers, if the printing speeds of printers used for divisional printing are different from each other, it is difficult to optimally distribute the numbers of target printing pages to the respective printers.
When a failure such as an error or the absence of paper occurs in a certain printer, special processing is required to cause another printer to print pages assigned to the failed printer.
When pages which cannot be printed due to a failure are to be printed by another printer, they cannot be printed in a proper printing order and direction. For example, assume that a document of 100 pages is printed by two printers each by 50 pages. One printer stops due to the absence of paper upon printing of 30 pages. Even if the remaining 20 pages are printed by the other printer, the pages cannot be printed consecutively from the printed pages, and must be rearranged upon completion of printing.